1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to network devices. It further relates to a method for operating the network device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In today's communication network systems, data congestion may occur when a network node receives more data packets at its input than it is able to process. Data congestion may also occur when data packets transition from a faster transport infrastructure to a slower transport infrastructure. In this regard, the network node and the slower transport infrastructure become a bottleneck for data packet transfers.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/537,256 filed Sep. 29, 2006 and published as US20070070901A1 discloses a method and/or a system for quality of service and congestion management for converged network interface devices. The system for quality of service and congestion management comprises a transmit processor being operable to rate limit flows of data packets either statically based on a per-class basis or dynamically when the transmit processor receives congestion management packets from a filter being operable to classify incoming management data packets from the communication network.
Therefore, it is a challenge to provide a network device enabled to handle data congestion in a communication network efficiently. It is a further challenge to provide a method for operating the network device, which handles data congestions in a communication network.